NEW ORIGIN of THE AVENGERS: A Stranger in Town
by Dan Bivens
Summary: When The Stranger does battle with the Silver Surfer & the FF in New York, the end result is not only deadly danger to humanity, but a cosmic birth of several new superheroes destined to become...the Avengers! SPECIAL ORIGIN STORY!
1. Clash of the Cosmic

Chapter 1

"Clash of the Cosmic"

Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards had returned to intensive scientific studies and experimentation in the supreme midst of an entire story of the multi-story top of the Baxter Building belonging to none-other-than: the Fantastic Four.

Head-and-neck stretched toward the main display screen of his space scanning system. Right arm stretched several feet to one side of said system's complicated controls. Left arm stretched several feet to the other. One man in Fantastic Four uniform of dark blue basically performing functions normally requiring quite a few topnotch technicians.

After all that had happened since first the Silver Surfer and, almost immediately after, Galactus, then, years after that first cosmic melee between the Devourer of Worlds and his glittering herald, once again. This time pitting not only the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer against great Galactus, but four other previous power cosmic-wielding heralds against their former master and Maker…

The man humanity knew as Mr. Fantastic, rather than Reed or Dr. Richards, had vowed to never again allow such cosmic threats to Earth to take place without first establishing significant forewarning.

Something that, after many months of comparative cosmic inactivity in anything at all unearthly, was about to be abruptly obliterated once spatial sweeps suddenly detected something significant streaking in from slightly beyond the Earth-Moon orbital locality…

"My God…"

"You picked what we were going to watch on the wall-screen TV yesterday, Ben, it's my turn today!" loudly lamented Johnny "Human Torch" Storm. Even as he struggled with the rocky hulk sharing the reinforced sofa in the main common area of the multi-floor Fantastic Four part of the previously beautiful Baxter Building.

Holding the TV remote in a rock-like right hand, while using his left to fend off the much smaller young man in similar Fantastic Four uniform, whom was uselessly struggling against someone of supreme mass and impossible-to-measure super-strength.

"No way, small fry," the gravelly voiced Thing thunderously responded while watching what he wanted on the enormous paper-thin plasma screen created by Mr. Fantastic for their mutual amusement. "You'll put it on somethin' sickenin' like 'Tyra' or 'The View'. And I'd rather trade punches with that Fallen One guy we last stood against all by my lonesome that put up with that crapola!"

"Dammit, Ben," angrily growled the Human Torch as his core temperature started its sharp rise, "there's an extreme motorbike special on ESPN 2 and I wanna watch it! So give it up gravel-for-brains!"

"Hey," retorted the rocky superhero wearing only his hallmark dark-blue britches baring the same 4 symbol as his three fellow freaks of a cosmic storm in space, "Reed said my organs…includin' my brain…were rock-like, Junior! He didn't say nothin' 'bout my brain bein' 'pebble-like'!"

"Damn it, Ben!"

With that, the hot-tempered Human Torch burst into blazing plasma-flame that, as always, the flame-retardant furnishings were designed to withstand. Which didn't stop the suddenly blazing superhero from floating a few feet over said scene prior to forming flaming fireballs before flinging them straight at…

"Hey! Cut it out, matchstick! Ow!"

Once again grappling together in what had suddenly seemed a daily dance between two bored-to-tears beings of singular superpowers unique to each of the Four. Not counting, of course, the cosmic visitor still streaking via silvery surfboard about the planet apparently selected as his second celestial home. When not streaking through deep space.

"If you wanna play rough, Torchie…let's play rough! Grrr-aarrrr!"

Yet again, responding to the thunderous sounds of destructive violence in the common area involving a blazing brother and rock-hewed friend, Susan "Invisible Woman" Richards stormed into the scene.

One which threatened definite destruction of yet another set of reinforced furniture in the form of a sofa held easily in one stony hand of the Thing while a flame-enshrouded Human Torch hovered not very far away with some more blazing balls in his burning hands.

"Ben! Johnny! Stop this now!" shouted the beauteous blonde about to reintroduce these two to her form-fitting force fields guaranteed to tame both in scant seconds.

The Thing slowly lowered, via that one huge hand, the heavy-as-hell couch to the carpeted floor. While the Human Torch fully flamed off to stand once again on that self-same floor. Both attempting to tell their side of the story at the exact same time, only to end up a mangled mess rather than understandable statements…

"Enough!" the Invisible Woman loudly ordered while hands, presently ungloved even though she, too, wore her Fantastic Four uniform of dark blue brandishing the self-same symbol, daintily tightened into fists. "I'm getting sick and tired of this, boys! Just because there's been very little to do lately doesn't mean you two have to behave like a couple of…!"

The sudden shrill sound of a Red Alert klaxon, accompanied by rapidly flashing red alert lights, both clandestinely included in the design of extreme comfort and clear-cut luxury of the common area…

"Reed's found somethin' on his gizmos!" said Thing with a vicious snarl of ardent anticipation.

"Let's go!" followed a fully flamed on Human Torch.

"Oh, no," said Invisible Woman somewhat under her breath, even though, deep down, the super-sexy spouse of Mr. Fantastic secretly desired something exciting to shake them all out of their shared doldrums.

In the short time it took for three of the Fantastic Four to pile into an emergency elevator, completely reconfigured to handle the hugeness of the Thing…

"What is it, Reed?" the Human Torch, flying first from the rapidly arrived elevator with the Thing and the Invisible Woman making a mad dash in the self-same general direction of Mr. Fantastic, still super-stretched in order to readily work his space scanner's complicated controls.

"Yeah," the gravelly voice of the Thing said swiftly after, "what's happenin', Stretcho!"

Allowing his head and hands to return to a normalized form, the smock-wearing, over Fantastic Four uniform, Mr. Fantastic said, "My cosmic sensors have detected something almost as powerful as Galactus on fast approach from further out into our solar system. Something more solidified living energy than anything at all relatively random."

"Meaning?" managed the Invisible Woman as her innermost desire for something to test their superpowers once more merged with her fearful concerns regarding such a situation.

"Meaning," lovingly explicated Mr. Fantastic to the one woman to whom he entrusted his whole heart and soul, "that this entire planet might very well be facing extinction. Again."

"So?" said the Thing while slamming one rock-hand into the other with a thunderous report. "We'll bash 'em the same way we did Galactus and the Fallen One. What's ev'ryone so blasted worried for!"

Though thoroughly proud of his heroic friend and fellow FF-er, Mr. Fantastic fretfully replied, "Though we have no choice but to head out in the Fantasti-Car, without further analysis, I can't guarantee that we can…"

"Guarantee-shmaurantee, Reed," the Human Torch cheerily replied, while his hot-as-hell plasma flames allowed him to rise ever higher into Mr. Fantastic's singular super-lab. "Let's just go bust this bozo from space!"

"Hell, yeah!" was the Thing's roaring response.

With a smile playing upon his lips, Mr. Fantastic said seriously, "Let's go."

Meanwhile, rapidly approaching Earth, in general, and New York, in particular…

A cohesive cosmic ball, fully cognizant and equally deadly, if it so desired, streaked far too fast to be seen by the unaided eye. As well as far faster than the time taken by the Fantastic Four to climb into their Fantasti-Car in order to rise through their hangar's hinged roof…

Having violently entered the cast-aside-by-society form of a homeless man with longish silver-white hair and handlebar mustache of same…

"I have succeeded in placing myself into a temporary 'home' while here on this puny planet!" proclaimed the reverberant voice belonging to the being from far, far away while cosmic dynamism literally crackled about both hands. "A planet my space-spanning senses detected attracting the likes of Galactus on two separate occasions! As well as two of his former heralds: the Silver Surfer and the Fallen One! If any single cosmic entity is to understand the reason for such significant attention directed toward a seemingly insignificant planet and its peoples...the Stranger is the one to seek it out! And if any stand in my supremely powerful path...!"

In answer to that self-posed promise, the Stranger unleashed the slightest hint of his power cosmic onto a parked car and near-instantaneously twisted it inside out…

"And now…the Stranger shall see for himself…what this world holds for the Absolutes of this vast universe!"

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Silver Surfer vs The Stranger

Chapter 2

"Silver Surfer vs. The Stranger"

"Where the hell, in all of Manhattan, are we gonna find this sucker, Stretcho?" asked a snarling Ben "the Thing" Grimm via oversized, just for him, headset. Riding in the rearmost section of the Fantasti-Car currently roaring overhead via massive rear thrusters and a little anti-gravity about its strange shape.

"According to my instruments," replied Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards while looking at the special sensor screens arrayed before him in the front section of said Fantasti-Car, "there is a concentration of cosmic energies northeast of our present position. We should be there in…"

"Reed, look out!"

Even as Susan "the Invisible Woman" Richards, riding to starboard with her brother, Johnny "the Human Torch" Storm, to port, shouted such a warning for what was directly before the Fantastic Four…

"Holy Hell!" loudly exclaimed the Thing even as the Human Torch fully flamed on and rocketed rapidly away, as towering higher than the tallest buildings in downtown Manhattan was…

"I am…the Stranger!" powerfully proclaimed a self-resized former homeless person temporarily possessed by a power cosmic personage from deepest space. Incredible energies crackling like something separately alive about the white-haired, handlebar mustached man whose simplistic clothing had been molecularly altered, atom by atom, to form some sort of otherworldly outfit. One exposing suddenly muscular arms and legs with massive torso dressed in red as a greenish cape fluttered freely from his huge shoulders. Wrists wrapped in red bands and boots of red strapped about massive feet firmly planted far below to block traffic and generate terror. "Your puny planet seems suffused with life-energies that…!"

"Yeah, yeah, we get it, bud!" rudely interrupted the Human Torch, blazing brightly while hovering very near the clearly cosmic colossus straight ahead of him. "This isn't our first dance to that tune! Let's see if you're as fireproof as ol' purple pants!"

Suddenly showering the head of this gargantuan gentleman from far, far away with intensely hot balls of plasma flame, for which the Stranger barely blinked…

"It's clobberin' time!"

That familiar war cry came from none-other-than the Thing as he prepared to leap from that rear section of the Fantasti-Car, causing Mr. Fantastic to switch on its complex autopilot prior to super-stretching in the direction of the Stranger…

"Oh, well, at least this unquestionably breaks up the monotony," sighed, heavily, the Invisible Woman while leaving her starboard section via psionically shaped invisible force fields acting as an airborne walkway.

At first, for the span of several heart-pounding periods possibly as long as many minutes or as short as scant seconds, the Stranger was taken aback by the brave attack carried out by the Fantastic Four, then…

"I say thee…enough!"

Even as such a shout thundered through the skies, cosmic power pulsed in such a fashion so as to thrust the still-flaming Human Torch away at a rapid rate that threatened to extinguish his blazing body…

"Whoa!"

And literally tied the stretched-to-physical extremes Mr. Fantastic into nasty knots…

"Ahhgg!"

As well as hurling the Thing hard down toward the streets hundreds of dizzying feet beneath them all…

"Ah, damn it…!"

And, finally, forcing the Invisible Woman to encase herself in an unseen sphere in order to survive her sudden drop in the self-same downward direction as the rock-skinned, and therefore invulnerable to injury, Thing.

"Is this the best this trifling little world has to offer against a master of the power cosmic?" resoundingly snarled the Stranger, still towering over downtown Manhattan while building up unbelievable energies around his huge hands.

When just then…

"You are not the only one possessing the power cosmic, Stranger!"

Having said such loudly and proudly, the Silver Surfer, soaring in from the far side of the Earth after sensing such a collection of incredible dynamism many thousands of miles away, the glittering man on the brilliant board unleashed unbelievably abrasive blasts from his outstretched hands.

"Uhn!"

Blasts which, had they been directed at any other entity, would've obliterated them utterly. But against such as the Stranger, it was only an irritating distraction at best.

"You!" thunderously uttered an enraged giant commanding a cosmic force filling his borrowed body with more pure power than the nuclear heart of Earth's sole sun. "The Silver Surfer! Former herald to great Galactus! Traitor to the master who made him! Protector of these tiny fleas that live on this out-of-the-way world! You dare defy such as the Stranger!"

"I dare," roared the Surfer in righteous reply, "because these Humans are deserving of their existence! Perhaps more so than any other! They…and the Fantastic Four…shall not fall as fodder for even the mysterious Stranger! The sole collective of consciousness supreme from that long-gone super-race of that world-turned-sun, Gigantus, in the Andromeda Galaxy! Yes, Stranger, I know all there is to know about such as you!"

Yet again, twin beams blasted forth from the hands of the Silver Surfer as he swooped and looped all about the angry, and getting angrier, momentarily materialized-in-the-flesh Stranger, second only to the Devourer of Worlds when it came to incredibly dynamic omnipotence.

"You shall pay for your impertinence, Surfer!" vociferously snarled the Stranger just as a single solitary finger of one huge hand unleashed a blast stronger than any thus mustered by the Silver Surfer.

"Uhhhnnnnn!"

Sending the shining argentine and genteel sky-soaring, space-spanning super-being helplessly tumbling toward the self-same solidity of the streets of Manhattan as had happened, ultimately, to the Thing, Mr. Fantastic, and the Invisible Woman…

"Got him!" Mr. Fantastic said as his super-stretched shape, twixt two broad buildings, formed a superhuman trampoline upon which lay a momentarily stunned into near-unconsciousness Silver Surfer. "Keep the Stranger busy!"

"You got it, Bossman!"

"On my way, brother-in-law!"

With his hands flamed off while the rest of him remained a Human rocket of blazing plasma, the Human Torch managed to carry the impossibly ponderous Thing straight at the Stranger far too fast for even gravity to yank the man of marble from the much smaller man of flame…

"Heads up, Big Boy!"

Having said such loudly and, also, proudly, the Thing held hands of unbreakable rock straight out in order to impact powerfully against the nose of the Stranger.

"Ahgk!"

Being a being of energy inside a borrowed body of a super-sized homeless Human, as well as so certain such a straightforward attack could never ever prove even a little victorious, the bombastic blow via two stock-still and rock-solid fists set a stunned for a second Stranger up for…

"Eat nova-flame, you cosmic creep!"

The Human Torch's white-hot flame blast blinded, for several rapidly passing seconds, the great giant in red-green, with some sort of yellow symbol in the middle of his mighty chest, was set up for the next cosmic assault from...

"Silver Surfer, wake up!" shouted the beauteous bride of Mr. Fantastic, as well as super-powerful contingent of the team, as her invisible force fields lifted both her and the stunned silvery ex-herald to Galactus straight up. Simultaneously using her invisibility power to cause both she and the Surfer to vanish from view.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fantastic super-stretched his impossibly pliable body about the booted ankles of the Stranger still towering over downtown Manhattan. It was teamwork supreme that would, invariably, include the incomparable Silver Surfer.

"Let's hope this works, or else…"

Mr. Fantastic didn't need to finish that self-directed statement, as a large part of any earnest battle between extremes such as this was in not allowing one's Self to succumb to a sense of final failure.

Internalized attitude always influenced conceptualized altitude as such pertained to ultimate triumph regarding any situation. Most especially a situation wherein hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Human lives lay in the balance.

"Surfer!"

Suddenly resuming consciousness, even as the Invisible Woman permitted him and her to return to complete perceptibility, the Silver Surfer stood and, in less than a second, caused his hovering board to promptly return for him to stand on it and ride right up to the stunned-for-a-few-scant-seconds Stranger. The power cosmic crackling about Surfer's glittering Self while building up massive dynamic energies with which to strike the towering titan.

"If destroying you shall save the Humans and their planet," loudly called out the Silver Surfer even as the Stranger just then noticed his swift and steady approach, "then destroy you I shall!"

Even as energies beyond Human comprehension lashed out from the Silver Surfer's extended arms and hands, causing the Stranger to shift his stance ever so slightly…

The straining super-stretched Mr. Fantastic, still tightly bound about the red booted ankles of this cosmic colossus, caused the Stranger to stumble against a business high-rise. Utterly obliterating its uppermost stories as those within had long since escaped via elevators and emergency stairwells.

It was a destruction already carefully calculated by the incredible intellect so singular to Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards and would end with the least possible injuries to gathered groups of gawking New Yorkers in Manhattan. As was an unspoken hope harbored in regards to such super-cosmic energies unleashed so far above it all.

"Uhhhhhh-AARRRRRGGGGGGG!"

"What the hell…?" the Thing, landing on the Invisible Woman's still-solid field of unseen energies, who was also awestruck over what was happening high over their heads.

"Damn…!"

An expenditure of energies cosmic caused a sudden about-face from the still blazing Human Torch.

"I was right," quietly contemplated Mr. Fantastic after allowing his super-stretched, and hurting like hell!, body and limbs to once again assume some semblance of normalcy while standing on the street at the booted feet of the Stranger.

In a flash of such pure power that Space-Time itself was literally turned inside out for a few fleeting seconds…

The Stranger was suddenly just gone and the Silver Surfer, drained and dropping to his brilliant board, almost instantly streaked toward the distant horizon at multi-Mach promptitude…

"What the hell happened, Stretcho?" asked the Thing as soon as the Fantastic Four returned to their self-flying Fantasti-Car in order to soar over the previous scene of such a supra-cosmic exchange. "Where'd that big-as-Hell bastard disappear to?"

"Yeah, Reed," added a fully flamed off, and glad to still be alive!, Human Torch of their super-pliable leader.

"According to the Fantasti-Car's scanning instruments, so intrinsically connected via satellite to the supercomputers in my lab…"

"Just spit it out, Rubber-Boy!"

Rolling his eyes at the Thing's constant usage of such derogatory terms in direct relation to his stretching superpower, Mr. Fantastic explicated, "There would appear to be a multiplicative cascade of conversely divergent universal fractal Realities that has…"

"C'mon, Reed," pleaded the powerhouse called the Thing, "tell us straight in something science dropouts can understand."

"Yeah," intolerantly interposed the Human Torch, "just pretend you're reading out of a 'Physics for Dummies' book."

Rolling his eyes yet again, but this time in a more simplistic exasperation, the super-scientist society also called Dr. Reed Richards reiterated a little less complicatedly. "The expenditure of cosmic power that sent the Stranger somewhere else so instantaneously also fractured the 'walls', if you will, separating one universal Reality from another. Several others, to be more precise. So now, also according to my scanners incorporated into the Fantasti-Car…there are super-powered persons suddenly in the New York region of our Reality."

"Say what?" the Thing thundered in response to something so seemingly improbable. While, also, actually experiencing a certain degree of personal excitement over super-beings similar to the Fantastic Four in and around their home turf. "Who and where, Rubber…uh, Reed?"

"The first," said Mr. Fantastic via his headset to the other three while redirecting their utterly unique aircraft away from the heart of Manhattan, "would seem to be in New York City itself…not far from the Forest Hills section."

"Well, let's go!" excitedly said the Thing, while silently seconded by the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch.

Seconds later, via Fantasti-Car thrusters operating at full strength while its unique anti-gravity envelope prevented its non-aerodynamic form from falling…

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. SpiderMan

Chapter 3

"Spider-Man"

Having heeded her husband, Susan "Invisible Woman" Richards exerted her ever-growing super-abilities to vanish from view the entire Fantastic Four as well as their high-flying Fantasti-Car.

Thus, they were more readily able to slip secretively into that section of New York City wherein the first of several superheroes from different Realities and, now, very much part and parcel of the self-same Reality as the Fantastic Four could be found…

"What the hell is that?" excitedly exclaimed Ben "the Thing" Grimm at the sight of someone wearing a form-fitting outfit of blue-red with black stylized spider symbol on his chest and a red one on his back. Literally swinging along, high above the busy city streets, via strong-as-steel spider webs shot forth from the inside wrists of either hand.

"I'm running an ID search via the Fantasti-Car's connection to the supercomputers back at our headquarters, Ben," easily answered Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, as they followed along from a safe distance so as not to have the thrusters' roar heard by this just-arrived apparent superhero. While he looked over a single solitary screen and its controls that the Invisible Woman had wisely allowed to remain seemingly material. "Since the Silver Surfer's cosmic attack against the Stranger, which fractured aphoristic walls separating certain Realities, his specifics should be in those vast memory banks of…wait! I have it. His superhero name is…Spider-Man. Some sort of genetically altered super-spider bit him and the subsequent introduction of artificially transmutated venom somehow metamorphosed his DNA into something…"

"So, what you're saying…," rudely interrupted a patently impatient Johnny "Human Torch" Storm from the port side of the still invisible via his sister's, the Invisible Woman's, cosmic storm-mutated superpowers. "What you're saying is that this character from another Reality has 'spider-powers'. That about it, Reed?"

"Uh, yes, Johnny," Mr. Fantastic stuttered in response via his headset transmitting to those others worn by the superhero group world-renowned as the Fantastic Four. "Seems his name, when not in that Spider-Man costume and persona, is Peter Parker."

Speaking of whom, Spider-Man continued web-slinging/swinging several stories above the streets, his spider-sense zeroing in on the site of a bank robbery-in-progress…

"Well, Spidey," said this superhero in red-blue under his breath with a hint of humor to his tone and no doubt a sly smile on his hidden by full head-mask face. "Looks like you're gonna get a little workout after all. Time to teach these gun-toting thieves a little lesson while my little digital camera takes pictures that I can sell to that ol' skinflint, J. Jonah Jameson."

"If we see anybody stickin' their heads out before we get outta sight!" warned a wearing-a-ski-mask man holding a shotgun while his partner-in-crime carried tote-bags of big bills from the just-robbed bank. "I'll blow 'em off!"

"Now is that any way to talk to folks who'd just given you guys a nice going-away present?" Spider-Man said snidely, having already used his web-shooting via a single wrist to stick-position his digital camera close to the action-to-come. "Now why don't we walk back in and apologize for your bad manners. Oh, and give back all that money."

"Spider-Man!"

"Shoot the bastard!"

While the shotgun toting bad guy began firing and pumping the weapon in his black gloved grip…

And while the second ski-masked bank robber dropped the bags of cool cash in order to retrieve his powerful revolver and opened up with hollow-tipped projectiles…

Spider-Man put his particular "talents" into play, starting with his uncanny acrobatic abilities, thanks to his Human-sized spider-powers…

"Wheeee-hooooooo! What's the matter, boys, can't hit a movin' man with the proportional powers of a spider? Yeeeee-haaaaa!"

By the time two ski-masked men completely emptied their respective weapons…

"Dammit, I'm out!"

"Me, too! Let's get the hell outta here! Screw the cash!"

…and before both could escape via waiting, as well as illegally double-parked, gas-guzzling getaway vehicle…

"Uh-uh-uhhhh," playfully scolded Spider-Man while web-shooting in the direction of the desperados in order to stop them seconds before slipping into either side of the still-idling car. "Where's your manner's with me, guys? Here I got dressed up and web-swung my way from the other side of the city just for you two…and here you try to run out on me the moment I drop down to the sidewalk. Tsk, tsk, and tsk."

"One thing's for sure about this Spider-Man," said the Human Torch, still as invisible as the other three along with their Fantasti-Car. "He and I are gonna be good friends. I can feel it! He's a superhero after my own fiery heart."

"When do we make contact, Reed?" asked the Invisible Woman while still safely exerting her superpowers to prevent them from being observed. "We are going to make contact…right?"

"Eventually, Sue," studiously said a still-looking-at-the-very-visible screen Mr. Fantastic. "For the time being, I want to take a quick look at all the 'new' superheroes suddenly sharing greater New York with the Fantastic Four."

"Where to next, Stretcho?"

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Iron Man

Chapter 4

"Iron Man"

Rocketing in via boot jets, while lock-jointed within the red-yellow metal suit for which he had gotten his widely known moniker, this second superhero swiftly made his way through the skies of the City that Never Sleeps. Having evidently left his not so secret HQ at the site of his birth: Long Island, New York.

Currently, according to supercomputer tie-in info via the visible-by-design screen before an otherwise unseen superhero head of the Fantastic Four, along with their currently imperceptible Fantasti-Car…

"He's called…Iron Man," Mr. Fantastic stated via transmitting-to-fellow Fantastic Four superheroes headset. "Inside that super-strong, nigh-invulnerable suit of super high-tech nano-level electronics, is Anthony 'Tony' Stark. Apparently, now, a multi-billionaire with a super-genius when it came to micro-engineering. A bit of a lady's man as well."

"Guess that means," jokingly injected the Invisible Woman from the starboard side of the unseen vessel soaring higher than Iron Man, "you'll want me to steer clear of him, huh, Reed?"

Though his smile was as invisible as himself, his teammates, and his self-designed Fantasti-Car, such still suffused his very words as he replied, "I think I can trust in your fidelity, dear. Our love precludes the possibility of…"

"You had me at 'fidelity', my love," affectionately proffered the Invisible Woman, while the Human Torch and the Thing clearly considered such as the proverbial wrong time/wrong place for open expressions of ever-elusive True Love.

"Will you guys knock it off? Jeez!" was the Human Torch's transmitted-via-headset retort.

"Yeah," adamantly added the Thing from the rear, "if I wanted to watch, uh, hear such super-sappy stuff, I would'a stayed home and watched a Romance movie on the tube with my main squeeze, Alicia. Sheesh!"

"What else do you have on this Iron Man, Reed?" seriously asked the Invisible Woman, wishing to shift the focus back to the true reason for this secretive trek through greater New York.

"Uhm," hummed Mr. Fantastic as much more rolled over his visible screen than had happened with Peter Parker/Spider-Man mere moments before. "Basically that, prior to an accident in the Middle East a few years ago…one that nearly killed Mr. Stark…he was as much a womanizing boozer as he was a brilliant inventor-for-hire via both our government as well as the business sector. Seems he was born into a bit of money, thanks to a multi-millionaire father who started Stark Enterprises. But, after the rather tragic death of both parents, he utilized his own brand of brilliance in electronics, etc., to take the Long Island establishment, employing only a couple of dozen design-techs, to one employing literally hundreds under the direction of…"

"Get to the good part, Reed!" loudly growled the gravelly voiced Thing as his baby blues basically stayed with the high-flying yellow-red Iron Man.

"Yeah," added an equally restless Human Torch, "just give us the Cliff Notes version already."

"Bottom line, Ben…Johnny," heavily heaved the super-intelligent leader of the Fantastic Four while summing up everything he read on the only consciously visible section of what the Invisible Woman maintained in an invisible state. "Tony Stark's injuries and the dangerous situation in which he was in while in the Middle East made it necessary to design something to not only keep this billionaire 'playboy' alive, but make it impossible to be easily killed by those through whom he had to pass in order to…"

"Reed!" roared the Thing and the Human Torch together.

"He eventually vowed to use his increasingly sophisticated nano-circuit designs to create a superhero to not only contend against common criminality and potential terrorism, but to actually stand against super-villains such as…"

Before Mr. Fantastic could finish his statement, such became quite clear as Iron Man met up with yet another metal-enshrouded individual quite quaintly called…

"Titanium Man!" boomed the electronically delivered voice of Iron Man, even as this self-styled superhero literally halted himself in mid-flight in order to steadily hover high in the skyscraper-surrounded sky of this section of New York City.

"Iron Man!" Titanium Man's mechanically/electrically delivered voice, with a heavy hint of a thoroughly Russian accent still so easily discernable. "I shall soon usher in a new Communist Party not only in my Motherland, formerly the USSR…but in this despicably democratic American super-city as well! But first…I must destroy you! Ha, haaaa, hahahaha!"

"You've never been able to do so before, Titanium Man!" thunderously replied Iron Man, still steadily hovering over New York City in the self-same fashion as Titanium Man. "What makes you think you can do it now? Especially in my city!"

"Bah! Enough talk! Prepare to be obliterated, Tony Stark!" shouted the former member of the now essentially extinct KGB.

"Bring it, Boris Bullski!" counter-challenged the artificially super-powerful industrial leader/billionaire/brilliant inventor.

Then, at the self-same moment, Iron Man and Titanium Man physically clashed in the skies over strangled-with-traffic city streets. Their suit's super-strength making it a mighty combative encounter, but suddenly secondary once these super-suited persons…one having invented such, basically, by himself; the other having secretly used Communist collected cash and coin to pay experienced engineers to duplicate what Tony Stark had originated…antipersonnel weaponry.

"Holy…!" the Thing thunderously uttered as Iron Man made magnificent use of palm-placed devices duly identified by Mr. Fantastic as "repulsor rays" blasting forth with focused concussive force.

Something similar to, but not nearly as sophisticated as, what was being bombastically utilized by Titanium Man. Neither thoroughly thrashing the other…yet.

But such would swiftly shift as Iron Man's might, repulsor rays as well as overall suit supplied super-strength, which had the ability to tie-in with certain satellites, designed and developed via Stark Enterprises, in order to, thus, significantly increase such.

Finally, with one unimaginably mighty blow, comparable to a punch from the super-strong Thing, Titanium Man was sent sailing so fast and far that his less-puissant suit of metal, as well as less-advanced duplication of Iron Man's mechanical/electrical contrivances provided evident defeat.

"All right, Iron Man!" cheered the Thing with a thrilled chortle. "Seems I got me a new buddy, just like Torch!"

With minute manipulation of made-visible, along with display screen, controls, Mr. Fantastic saw to it the still-unseen Fantasti-Car rolled away for yet another area of greater New York whereupon more superheroes could be clandestinely observed.

Therefore, mere minutes later…

END OF CHAPTER 4


	5. The Hulk vs the Black Panther

Chapter 5

"The Hulk vs. the Black Panther"

"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!" roared a rampaging behemoth of green through the streets of the Bronx borough with more mass, made of muscle instead of stone, than the Thing.

Speaking of whom, being from the Bronx prior to piloting fighter jets and space shuttles, and currently still invisible, thanks to the Invisible Woman, along with the other three Fantastic Four members along with the Fantasti-Car cruising over the area...

"Dammit, Reed, I can't just sit like some sightseer from South Georgia while this big bastard tears up my old stompin' grounds!"

With a very heavy sigh of exasperation in regards to having to leave their surreptitious spying in order to protect the people below from harm, Mr. Fantastic said, "Yes, Ben, you certainly have a point. Especially since my screen readout says this is a creature called, in his own previously separate Reality, the Hulk…and he is virtually invulnerable as well as completely unstoppable. So far."

"Enough talk, dammit," exclaimed the gravelly voiced Thing, "let's just get down there and beat the hell outta that…!"

"Wait!" interjected the Invisible Woman, still extending her cosmic storm-imparted power beyond just her own shapely Self. "Look! The guy in the all-black costume! With a whole head cowl and cape!"

"Yeah," added the about-to-flame on-and-fly down Human Torch, "he's taking on that Hulk thing with what appears to be…"

"According to screen readouts," abruptly interrupted Mr. Fantastic with the cold sterility of a scientist, "he calls himself Black Panther. He's really an African chieftain with a near-genius level of understanding for science and engineering. Which has apparently profited his former white South African ruled region and, as their protector…as the Black Panther…prior to arriving via privately owned Learjet into New York…broke the proverbial back of tyranny and…"

"Enough, already, Reed!" the Thing thundered. "Ain't it enough this guy's pretty much doin' what those SWAT guys can't with this butt-ugly Hulk? Jeez!"

"He certainly is brave," softly said the Invisible Woman while admiring the man in the form-fitting, identity-hiding, solid black costume currently keeping the immensely massive Hulk completely off balance below their hovering invisible, thanks solely to her!, Fantasti-Car. "And he seems to be fighting that monster without any sort of superpowers. Reed?"

"You're right, dear," replied the rubbery leader of the Fantastic Four as more and more readable data displayed on the purposely still visible screen via his bowsprit seated position. "The Black Panther, real name T'Challa from Wakanda, South Africa, has honed his fighting skills since childhood to become, basically, unbeatable against any foe. Even one that is a gamma ray-powered super-strong beast standing some fifteen feet tall and at least two tons in weight…even though, when not the mentally dimwitted Hulk, he's a brilliant experimental scientist named Bruce Banner. Hm. Looks like I've got a new friend now as well. Just like Johnny and Ben."

"Guess that just leaves me," the Invisible Woman mused as all four unseen superheroes watched the Black Panther execute expert mixed martial arts maneuvers against the Hulk.

"Hulk smash!" shouted the seemingly slow-minded monster of muscle, as massive fists slammed so hard onto the already shattered street's surface as to send shockwaves in all directions. Knocking almost all the heavily armed SWAT officers onto their respective backsides. "Little man in black not stop Hulk! Not when Hulk want smash men with guns! RRRRRRRRRR!"

"I do not know about you, Hulk," said the Black Panther with a too-proper pitch and intonation that made it very clear he hailed from a far distant land and definitely not the Bronx. "But I have trained my body to withstand extreme stress for several hours. Furthermore, my Black Panther apparel is made with a weave of vibranium metal filament alongside the more normal fiber of black. That means, should you successfully strike me with one of those huge hands, the shock shall be wholly absorbed in such a fashion so as to prevent potential injury. Of course, as slowly as your massive Self seems to move…that is a highly unlikely climax to this confrontation."

"Bah!" explosively said the big, green, and mean muscular immensity that men, first in that pre-fragmented, by the Silver Surfer and the Stranger, Reality, and, now, in this one, called the Hulk. "Little man talk too much! Hulk will smash!"

"…and he has extendable-retractable vibranium-adamantium mini-claws in those black gloves," Mr. Fantastic continued to rattle off while reading, aloud, the data on his visible-by-conscious choice-via-the Invisible Woman display screen. "Mini-claws which he can either use in a fight to the death with an armed adversary or to literally climb up the side of most sky-high buildings like our own. Amazing! His full head mask's pointy panther ears can literally tune into distantly talking persons and the eyeholes have a seemingly see-through film nano-engineered for night vision usage. Incredible!"

"Reed," prodded the Human Torch from his still-seated position in the still-unseen ship, "are we gonna go down and introduce ourselves or are there more superheroes suddenly in our here-and-now to take a look at?"

"Yes, uh, sorry," slightly sputtered Mr. Fantastic as, once again at his deft direction, the invisible vehicle flew away from the Bronx scene of seemingly impossible conflict between the unimaginably muscular and the incredibly acrobatic.

They wouldn't have far to fly before that next super-being from a far different Reality, as a direct result of a super-cosmic clash between the Silver Surfer and the Stranger, appeared amidst a dramatically localized explosion of lightning.

From the realm of the godly to the realm of the Human.

END OF CHAPTER 5


	6. Thor and GiantGirl

Chapter 6

"Thor + Giant-Girl"

"Thee may wish to resize thyself, Janet," said the just-transformed-via-lightning Thor, purported God of Thunder, even as the curvaceous superhero, wearing a maroon, nearly purple, masked costume with blue gloves and boots as well as blue highlight striping up one side of her sexy torso and down the other. "I somehow sense that we be in a land not of our respective births."

"If by that you mean," Giant-Girl grunted even as she willed the super-suit's Pym particles, named after a dear friend and former lover, Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym, far removed from this Reality, "that we're not in Kansas anymore. I'd have to agree, Doc. Don't correct me, that was just an expression…I know we're really from New York."

"Please, milady, be not thou confused," Thor, the Thunder God, sonorously said as Giant-Girl lived up to her superhero namesake and swiftly increased her height to that of a four-story structure. "Though I be Dr. Donald Blake when not striking hard the end of my makeshift cane with which to walk, once I am transformed into my Asgardian Self, I am, indeed and quite thoroughly…Thor."

"Oh, sor-reee!" replied, jokingly, Giant-Girl in the self-same playful fashion as she would do as socialite heiress Janet Van Dyne. "Who would've ever thought a Thunder God could be so touchy? Sheesh!"

"Did you see that?" the Thing thundered from the rear of the still-invisible-via-Invisible Woman's superpowers Fantasti-Car.

"Yeah, Ben ol' buddy," the Human Torch was swift to say in response to the site of a shapely lady so suddenly, unimaginably large. "She sure puts that chick in 'Attack of the 50-foot Woman' to shame. Oh, Momma!"

"I was talkin' about the big, blonde dude with the hammer," gregariously groaned the Thing. "Don't you ever give yer libido a rest, flame-boy?"

"Not when a woman can be so beautiful and become so…big."

"Well," the Invisible Woman managed amidst such a testosterone-suffused situation, "at least I've found me a new friend, too."

"I'd certainly love to get that super-suit off her," murmured Mr. Fantastic, drawing Invisible Woman's individual ire, which he need not have seen to sense. "Uh, so I can learn more about these Pym particles printed out on my screen and find out how it can cause a person to resize themselves in such an extreme fashion."

Before more Fantastic Four raillery could be bantered about…

"We art being watched, Giant-Girl," grumbled Mighty Thor, whose semi-divinity endowed the sometimes-Thunder God/sometimes-Human with the irreproachable ability to sense the presence of similarly super-powered persons. "There!"

Even as Giant-Girl looked in the direction to which the Thunder God gestured, seeing nothing even though her super-height placed her significantly closer to the invisibility-sheathed vehicle hovering barely a little higher than herself…

"Thor shall force them to the street and understand their deceptive needs and natures!" he rumbled regally while rapidly twirling his majestic hammer, Mjolnir, in such a fashion and at such a speed that an inverse vortex was created and canceled out any and all anti-gravity enveloping the Fantasti-Car.

"What the hell, Stretcho…!"

"Reed, darling, what's happening…?"

"Brother-in-law…!"

Responding to the simultaneous exclamations of his fellow Fantastic Four friends and teammates, even as the invisibility field faltered as his blonde bride lost all concentration critical to its continuance…

"Thor's hammer is capable of literally sucking us down out of the sky and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it! Ready yourselves for a crash-landing!"

Such a statement of forewarning would invariably lead each to utilize their person-specific powers to avoid individual injury: Mr. Fantastic would rely upon his super-pliability; Invisible Woman would surround herself with an unseen spheroid of force capable of countering virtually all detrimental impacts; Human Torch flamed on and flew up and away via his self-produced plasma; and the Thing's rock-like external and internal composition simply made any injury from any fall utterly unlikely.

"Hey," exclaimed the larger-than-Human woman within the size-shifting super-suit, "there was someone flying around up there, Thor! Who are you people and why are you spying on us?"

"And where, pray tell, hath thou brought us?" concluded the Thunder God while allowing Mjolnir to no longer spin, even though he held it in a threatening manner all the same. "For this be not the New York we hath known. Speak!"

"C'mon, blondie," threatened Thing angrily with huge hands of extant stone forming massive fists with which to hit. "Make my afternoon."

"Wait, Ben!"

Before Mr. Fantastic could settle the situation, the Thing charged Thor while the lady in identity-hiding super-suit swiftly willed herself back to previously average size and shape.

Even as a fully flamed off Human Torch gave her a grin and a wink that would, ordinarily, assure the sexual interest of any other equally shapely lady. But not so for someone whose superhero status, in a Reality shared with Thor, was clearly equaled by her social standing and personal wealth.

However, the Invisible Woman saw an opportunity to not only make her first ever true friend since the space station accident, something made possible by such size-altering abilities, even if such were utterly artificial as opposed to provided-via-cosmic storm DNA alteration…

THHHHHMMMMMM!

That thunderous, and then some, sound was made when Mjolnir hammered hard against the Thing's stony surface, sending the usually unstoppable superhero skidding over the streets to rip open a great trench via said unbelievable blow of an enchanted hammer held in the hand of a muscle-bound Man-God.

"Wait, Thor!" loudly pleaded Mr. Fantastic while super-stretching half his form in order to readily acquire the Thunder God's total attention. "We mean you and Giant-Girl no harm! We, too, are superheroes…of this Reality! I can explain everything! Just give me the chance. Please."

"Very well," powerfully replied Thor while lowering, just a little!, his hammer made of the mystical metal Uru. "But should the rock-beast attempt to attack again, I shall be forced to unleash lightning bolts into his hideous hide!"

"Hey!"

"Understood…"

But as the genius scientist started to explain the impossible to a Thunder God and a socialite superhero…

Another out-of-Reality hero would arrive…and not at all alone.

END OF CHAPTER 6


	7. Captain America

Chapter 7

"Captain America"

Suddenly, sailing straight as a proverbial arrow released by some extremely expert archer, a red and white, mostly, saucer-shaped shield slammed hard into the Fantasti-Car, forced to land via Thor's hammer mere moments before...

"What the hell...!" the Thing thunderously roared again as anger supplanted surprise in the span of a single solitary second.

So, too, did the Invisible Woman, ready to erect an unseen force field about the four, and the Human Torch, still flamed on and hovering very near the group, react with crossness mixed with amazement.

And all eyes turned toward...

"I am called," stated a muscular man in a red, white, and blue identity-hiding habiliment, including half-cowl covering a clearly handsome face, as his shield swooped back like an obedient boomerang, "Captain America. I assume this is not the New York of my time."

But it was Mr. Fantastic that stepped forth, while Giant-Girl, still shrunk back to normal, and Thor, holding his mystical Mjolnir menacingly, a little at least!, while the rest of the Fantastic Four remained to the rear of said scene...

"You are quite correct, uh, Captain America," Mr. Fantastic said with a smile as the man in red, white, and blue literally stood in a stance of potential contention. "Allow me to explicate..."

Amidst grumbling, as usual, from the Thing, swift shushing from the Invisible Woman, and fireball formation, just to be safe!, by the hovering Human Torch...

"That would make sense," Captain America mused as his stance slackened a little. "The last I recall was being back in New York City after fighting the Nazis in 1941 Europe. So it seems...I'm not only out my time...I'm out of my Reality. Interesting."

Mr. Fantastic was truly stirred via the serene sense of acceptance on the part of Captain America, a product of the Forties suddenly extant in a place some sixty-plus years after all that had happened to produce a powerful, but not super-powerful, personage. Reed Richards would look up the data on this individual later and learn a lot more about a formerly 4-F army reject physically resurrected as a true super-solder.

Not one with super-strength, such as the Thing, Thor, Giant-Girl, when using her super-suit to resize herself into a four-story superhero, Iron Man, the Hulk, and Spider-Man, surreptitiously watched by the Fantastic Four before arriving at this particular point of the City That Never Sleeps.

No, the "super" part of that previous statement, Mr. Fantastic would invariably learn, was in Captain America's supreme stamina and incredible reflexes. But it was still quite clear that this was, by any stretch of the usage of such a word, a superhero.

"In my time," commented Captain America in a manner that automatically caused those standing before and about him to pay special heed to him in much the same manner as Americans, and many more the world over, did in direct relation to the American flag. "Or, more accurately, my Reality...I was part of an entire team of crack counter-Nazi soldiers co-led by Sgt. Nick Fury."

"So?" the Thing thunderously roared with a proverbial chip the size of the Chrysler Building on his massive stone shoulders. "You sayin' ya wanna replace Reed as the head honcho or somethin'? 'Cause that ain't gonna happen, blue-boy!"

The slamming of one massive fist of rock straight and strong into the open palm of the other, creating a crack a lot like the lightning via Thor very recently, told Captain America that this was as true a hero as said Sgt. Fury from a Reality folded into the one formerly just for the Fantastic Four...

"Don't worry, uh, Thing," said a smiling Captain America, even though the use of such instead of a normal name like Ben Grimm rankled his well-mannered nature. "The group I was considering bringing together in this crossed-over universe was Giant-Girl, Thor, as well as those whose acquaintance I had made immediately prior to looking into the lightning brought forth by, I now know, Thor's hammer..."

As if on prearranged cue came a certain web-slinging/swinging superhero in blue-red, a boot jet-flying man in metal, an acrobatically agile African prince in black, and a green gargantuan nearly four times more massive than the Thing and whose super-strength surpassed even that of the Thunder God's...

"Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, and the Hulk have already agreed," continued Captain America, "and should Giant-Girl and Thor also agree, we will create a second superhero group here in greater New York to work hand-in-glove with the Fantastic Four."

"I see," said Mr. Fantastic while musingly stroking his chin in such a fashion so as to stretch it unnaturally long, only to allow it to promptly return to normal once more. "Considering the expected increase in super-villains, since other Realities now have invariably blended with our own, that would probably be an excellent plan. Have any potential team names in mind, Captain?"

With less consideration than those standing, or in Spider-Man's case, hanging!, around a crowding with curious citizenry street scene, Captain America announced...

"The Avengers!"

And so, because of the incredible cosmic energies expended by both the Silver Surfer and the Stranger so recently in Manhattan proper, a great and grand, historically speaking, new super-group came to be.

One with whom, from time to time, the Fantastic Four could come together in order to do combat with the new and no doubt deadly Earthly super-villains brought into being from those self-same Realities whose walls, proverbially speaking, had been obliterated.

From this moment on, Dr. Doom would be the least of Mr. Fantastic's overcareful considerations. And as far as the Thing and the Human Torch were concerned...boredom no longer played into their daily plans.

Nor anyone else's.

END?


End file.
